Improving winter wheat yield and water use efficiency using soil moisture sensor-driven precision furrow irrigation

Effective water management is critical for enhancing winter wheat yield, grain quality, and resilience in rice-wheat double-cropping systems of South and East Asia. However, production in paddy soils remains constrained by spring droughts, post-anthesis waterlogging, and the absence of region-specific irrigation guidelines. This study evaluated precision irrigation strategies integrating real-time soil moisture monitoring to improve water use efficiency (WUE) and crop performance under variable climates. Field experiments conducted over three seasons (2021–2024) in South Korea compared three treatments: conventional rainfed (CRF), soil moisture-based irrigation at 55 % available soil water (SIA), and at 55 % saturation water content (SIS). SIA consistently outperformed CRF and SIS, increasing grain yield by 20–27 %, WUE by 10–22 %, and leaf area index by up to 16 %. Maintaining soil moisture within the 0–40 cm available water range between jointing and grain filling optimized growth and resource use, whereas SIS induced oversaturation and CRF suffered from moisture deficits. This study offers an integrated framework linking agronomic performance to sensor-trigger logic and on-farm constraints. By converting real-time soil-moisture readings into stage-specific irrigation rules, this work shows that the available soil water-based threshold (SIA) increases yield and WUE over rainfed and saturation-based approaches while revealing how soils and seasonal climate shape outcomes.